Earlier this month, Law.com interviewed Judith Gundersen, President of the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE). In the last paragraph President Gundersen made some news that all bar support teachers should pay attention to.

What do you think the bar exam will look like in five years?

It’s hard to predict, but I think we might be looking at a different delivery mechanism. I think we might eventually be moving away from the Scantron sheet and bubbling in answers. There aren’t that many exams now that use paper in pencil.

President Gundersen reiterated this statement that the NCBE is focusing on how the bar exam should be delivered in the President’s Page of the September 2017 edition of the Bar Examiner. As bar support teachers, many of us spend a lot of time teaching students how to actively engage with bar exam questions on paper – to circle, underline, draw diagrams and flow charts, and make notes of legal issues that pop into their heads as they read through the question.

As I’ve discussed before, people read differently on a screen and on paper. That means that we have to start rethinking how we teach our students to engage with the material in front of them. Even if they can highlight and make notes on a question on the computer, they may want to draw diagrams on paper or jot down a quick outline for themselves. Looking down a piece of paper and up at a computer screen will take time.

This announcement also raises many questions about how the exam will be delivered if the bar does move to a completely computerized format. If the essays move online as well, will applicants be able to do a split screen and see both the question and their answer simultaneously? Are applicants going to be expected to read a whole packet of MPT materials and go back and forth between the documents on the same small computer screen where they will be typing their answer?

If the bar examiners are going online in five years, that means we only have one year until the first group of part-time 1Ls who will be facing a computerized test comes through our doors. It’s time to put our heads together to figure out best practices for teaching them how to read deeply, actively, and critically on a computer screen.

I hope that if the NCBE does make a shift in delivery mechanisms, it does so with enough lead time that students can practice taking exams with the questions on the computer screen as early as their first semester.

Law school is hard and hectic. However there are a number of things you can do during law school that will help you with the bar study process. You will be much better off going into the bar prep period if you have a strong sense of who you are as a learner. Bar prep (and law school) is full of advice – people telling you what to do based on what they did. But the only way to successfully complete the bar exam is to do what works for you. You will have a tremendous advantage of you know what that is before you enter the bar study period.

This is where law school comes in. You have three or four years to figure out what study materials work best for your brain.

One of these main tasks you will have to accomplish during bar prep is to understand and memorize a large amount of material. The more active you are in your own learning, the better off you will be. Some students like to make linear outlines, some make flashcards, some make mind maps, some make charts or diagrams, some write notes on giant posters or white boards, some record themselves and repeatedly listen to themselves reciting doctrine, some write or type out rules over and over. The most successful students do a combination of these things, or find other creative ways to learn the material they need to know in law school. You should use your time in law school to try different methods of memorization and see which method work best for you.

One of the traps that students fall into during bar prep is trying too many new things. Sometimes students will succumb to peer pressure. I hear over and over that other people are using flashcards so a student feels like she needs to make flashcards even though she has never used them before and they don’t work for her. Bar study is not the time to try something new or use something you aren’t comfortable with, especially just because others are doing it.

The other skill to perfect during law school is, of course, exam taking itself. You will be confronted with a number of in class exams in law school. Many of these will include multiple choice questions and essays that are modeled after to those you will see on the bar. Even if the questions your law professors test you on are not in bar exam format, the analytical skills you will need to do well on them are substantially similar to the skills you will need on the bar exam.

You want to practice writing essays and doing multiple choice questions as much as you can. You should seek out practice questions from your faculty, school exam files, and academic support professionals. If all else fails, use commercial sources like study guides and bar review books.

But, it is not enough to just do questions and look at the answers. You have to be thoughtful and reflective. It’s important to figure out why you are answering a question incorrectly. Is it because you didn’t know a rule? Did you forget an important exception? Did you read too quickly and miss an important word or fact? Did you read too slowly and overanalyze? Did you add a fact that wasn’t actually in the question?

You should start keeping a journal of these types of tidbits beginning in your first semester of law school. You can develop valuable insights about yourself as learner and your own learning processes. Then you can begin to develop strategies to strengthen your weaknesses and avoid common pitfalls.

Many of us go through years of education without knowing how we learn best. Paying attention to this in law school will give you a tremendous advantage when you begin to study for the bar exam.

Bar examiners are notoriously strict when it comes to awarding testing accommodations. They appear to primarily look at whether an applicant was awarded accommodations on other standardized tests, including the SAT, LSAT, and MPRE.

Bar examiners require a higher standard of proof than university and law school disability offices. There is no guarantee that the medical documentation you provided to your educational institutions will lead to the same accommodations on the bar as you received during school.

It is important to have comprehensive and timely evaluations from medical professionals if you are seeking testing accommodations. As law students, you should visit your school’s disability services coordinator in your second year to come up with a plan for making sure you have all of the documentation you will need when you apply to sit for he bar exam. Also make sure to thoroughly review the application requirements. They should be posted on your state bar examiner’s website.

If you plan to apply for accommodations on the bar exam, apply for accommodations during law school exams and on the MPRE, even if you don’t think you will need them. The bar examiners will look at your history of accommodation when making their determination. Failure to apply for accommodations in other settings will be seen as a reason that you do not need them on the bar exam.

Finally, don’t get discouraged if you are denied accommodations, or are not granted your full request. ALWAYS APPEAL. Appeals are often granted, in whole or in part. See if there is someone at your law school (check with the disability services office, bar support faculty, or other faculty) who can help you draft your appeal. They often have lots of experience.

You may not be sleeping very well at this point. The bar exam is only a few days away and you may not have the healthiest routine. That’s ok, but now is the time to try to get yourself ready for exam day.

If you’ve been staying up late studying and sleeping late, try to get yourself on your bar exam day schedule. Gradually begin to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier so that your body gets used to it.

You will probably not sleep well the night before the bar exam. That’s ok, but it can be disastrous if you also haven’t slept for several days before. Sleep is not only important for focus, it actually aides in memory retention as well.

Now is not the time to burn the midnight oil. Now is the time to move yourself into a regular sleep pattern so you can be fresh for exam day.

It’s important to make a plan for exam day. You want to know when you have to wake up, how you’re getting to the test site, what you can bring to the test site, what you’ll eat, and how you’ll get home. You also want a plan for what you’ll be doing during each portion of the exam.

Stop by the test site before exam day so you don’t have any anxiety about getting lost. Make sure you give yourself plenty of extra time to deal with every day issues such as traffic and transportation delays. Make a back up plan in case your first transportation plan doesn’t work.

Thoroughly review the security policy for your jurisdiction so you know what you are permitted to bring in to the test facility, and what you are not permitted to bring in.

Map out a plan for your day.

If you’re taking the UBE on the east coast, your schedule will look like this:

Tuesday

9:30-12:30: 2 MPTs

2:00-5:00: 6 essays

Wednesday

9:30-12:30: 100 MBEs

2:00-5:00: 100 MBEs

(On the west coast, your MPTs will be in the afternoon and your essays in the morning.)

It is your responsibility to keep track of your timing, so know what time you should be at each point. At 90 minutes, move on to the second MPT (that’s 11am). Spend no more than 30 minutes on each essay. For the MBEs, you’ve got 1 minute and 48 seconds per question. That’s roughly 17 questions per half hour, 25 questions per 45 minutes, or 33 questions per hour.

Make a schedule for yourself and look at it every day. Memorize it. Write it out on scrap paper next to you as soon as the exam begins so that you can stay on track.

It’s also recommended that you bring your own lunch. Many test sites will offer meal services. However, if you bring something you 1) won’t have to wait on line and 2) can make sure the food won’t upset your stomach or make you sleepy.

Wherever you are taking the bar exam, dress in layers. The room will either be too hot or too cold. You want to make sure you are comfortable and not distracted by your body temperature.

You may be hitting a wall right now – too exhausted to continue studying while simultaneously feeling like nothing you do is working.

Unfortunately, this feeling is normal. It’s all part of the process. You’ve been studying for a long time and you’re tired. Take a break this weekend. Go out to dinner. Watch a movie. Do something completely unrelated to the bar exam.

Confidence is a huge part of success on the bar exam. Trust yourself. You have come so far since you first walked into law school as a 1L. You graduated from law school. You know how to do this, even if you can’t articulate it. You’ve been studying for this exam for two months. You can absolutely pass the bar exam. You have all the skills you need.

Trust the process now and trust yourself. If you feel like something isn’t working, do something else for a while. You know more than you think you do, and more is sticking than it feels like is in your brain.